Post Script
by Katia-chan
Summary: She'd always intended to die with her secret. But in the end, she just couldn't manage it. They'd made two tapes for baby Universe... Spoilers for "A Single Pale Rose".


Post Script

By Katia-chan

Rose knows it's Steven.

Garnet couldn't tell them, and she didn't go to a doctor, but there's something deep inside her that is just certain, in a thrilling way that sends tremors down to her toes. They picked two names, and bought two sets of clothes (because dressing a baby for gender is such a novelty and so human and Rose can't get enough of that), and they've recorded two tapes, one for Steven, and one for Nora. But she [i]knows[/i] he's a boy.

She hasn't told anyone though, not the other gems, and not even Greg. It's a silly thing to keep secret, but while no one else knows, it's her secret, and this once, it's such a good secret. She hopes he knows, and that this little time when it's really just the two of them will make up for the later times, when he won't be able to feel her anymore. She wants him to feel how much she loves him.

So that's why she picks up Nora's tape, after Greg's asleep. They'd had fun learning how to use the camera earlier, and she's pretty much got the trick of it now. She fast-forwards all the way to the end, past Greg being adorable, and past her message to the never-to-be-born baby girl. She stares into the camera, silent, for a long time.

"You're living a lie, Nora, and you don't know it. Everything they tell you about me, about the me that's in you, will be untrue. They don't know it either. And if I've done this right, no one will ever tell you."

She's become so stoic about so many things. But she's been faithful to her silence, as faithful as Pearl, and so this is the first time she's thought about any of this, much less spoken it aloud, since... Thousands and thousands of years, things buried so deep in her head that she could almost think they weren't real. But here, in front of this camera, they are real, and enormous, and she's so small. She stares steadily at the camera,challenging, and does not lift a hand to wipe her face.

"But I want to tell you. You deserve to know..." She stops, starts over, because she wants to not be lying, just once. "You don't deserve to know; you deserve so much better than that. But I want to tell someone. And I thought maybe I had grown out of being so selfish, but I don't think I did."

A pause, a breath, and a subtle unconscious change of posture.

"I [i]am[/i] Rose Quartz. But I was pink diamond."

She still feels like Rose - she had been afraid she wouldn't. And now the words are out, the things she thought would swallow her seem very far away. After so many millennia, it doesn't even sound real, even to her. It's someone else's choices, someone else's life..

"I fell in love with this planet, with the life on it. I wanted to save it, to protect it, so I left that part of myself behind...murdered it, to start a new life. And I did. And I got you, and Greg, and this ridiculous city, and this beautiful, strange, and magical earth. And I don't regret...that. It was worth it... you were worth it." She's grown up enough now to hear the selfishness and hypocrisy, but this was her chance to say true things, and even if she doesn't like it, that was 45 seconds of complete honesty, the first she's had since she took her hands from Pearl's face.

Pearl... She wishes she could tell Nora to tell Pearl she was sorry. And she is, in ways she's just beginning to understand. But... probably not enough. And anyway, she deserved the apology from Rose herself, and if she couldn't get that, it would be better to get nothing at all. Rose has grown up enough to know this, at least.

She stops the camera. She'd intended to give more information, to explain herself, but she's... just so tired now. The tape for the little girl they aren't going to have is done. It's a gut-wrenching, exhausting relief to have said the words, just once. She wonders if Pearl has ever confessed these things to empty air. She probably can't. A benefit, she thinks bitterly, of being a diamond.

She does comfort herself with the knowledge that at least she was kind enough not to leave this tape for Steven. Steven won't have to know this; she can be Rose for Steven, loving, sacrificing, lying, best-intentioned Rose for the little boy who's existence she's so unshakably certain of.

But then, she's been wrong, about so many things. She covers the lens, rewinds, hits record again, and sits in silence for 45 seconds.


End file.
